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Life of Jaan

During the first week of last week of August, 2005 Bollywood woke up to a shocking magazine cover.

The reputed film magazine, Stardust, published an investigative report along with pictures to prove that Aamir Khan has a love-child in London called Jaan.

The magazine also wrote that Aamir had a live-in relationship with British journalist Jessica Hines when he was shooting for Vikram Bhatt’s Ghulam. It was also reported that Jessica left Mumbai when she became pregnant and later gave birth to Jaan.

The magazine quoted Jessica as saying that Aamir Khan could go through a paternity test if there’s an iota of doubt in his mind that Jaan is not his son. Needless to add, the article sent shock-waves through Bollywood.

This is the magazine cover (on the right) that started it all.

The reason why it became a huge controversy was because everybody was unaware of this development. While there was gossip in some close-knit circles about Aamir being in a live-in relationship with a London-based, blue-eyed, blonde journalist, but nobody knew that she had given birth to a son in London.

The article was quoted and carried across media just before the release of Aamir’s film Mangal Pandey, The Rising. Incidentally, the film didn’t do too well at the box office.

After the publication of the article, Jessica Hines and her friends in Bollywood reacted very strongly in another newspaper article which was a follow-up to the supposed expose.

Jessica didn’t deny speaking to the magazine’s correspondents but she said that they entered her house on a false pretext. Interestingly, she never said that the she was quoted wrongly in the article. She only said that her son should be left alone and that nobody had the right to intrude into her personal life, the way the magazine correspondents did.

In the same newspaper article that followed the rabble-rousing magazine cover story, Jessica Hines said that the boy’s father “did not like her” and she will say the same thing to her son when he grows up and ask about her father. When pressed further, Jessica hinted that she doesn’t want to reveal the identity of Jaan’s father. She also indicated that Jaan’s father had abandoned the child.

Following the brouhaha that the newspaper article generated, the magazine’s editor released a statement soon after which said that the magazine stands by the article. The editor also claimed that every word mentioned in the article is true. I have uploaded the statement on a separate page for reference.

Following the reports, the Indian press was largely quiet about Jessica Hines. And even if Jessica reportedly continued coming to India, she chose to stay away from the Indian media.

But Jaan continued making sporadic news in the media as his resemblance to Aamir Khan was uncanny. Here is the latest picture of Jaan that Jessica posted on her public Twitter account. Jaan is 10 years old now. I am not copying and pasting the picture but I am embedding Jessica’s tweet below.

Jessica Hines made news again two years later in 2007 when it was reported that she had married an English businessman called William Talbot, who loved Jaan no less than her.

She also hinted in the same article that she is a little removed from Bollywood, even though her love for India is as strong. Her book on Amitabh Bachchan that brought her to Mumbai was also published by that time and was a success. While ruing that certain parts of her life has been ‘painful and brutal’, she said that she would have loved to write a book on Shah Rukh Khan again but didn’t want to attempt it as too many people were already writing on him.

After that, there have been very few reports about Jaan in the Indian media. He was growing up in his own world and his exotic good were talked about on a few private forums.

Jaan remained out of the public memory for at least the next five years.

Meanwhile, as you can see in the picture on the right, Jessica doesn’t look the same but she is as beautiful as she used to be when she first visited India.

Jaan, a Bollywood hero in the making?

Jaan looks like a true Bollywood hero even though he is all of 10 years. I am yet to see a child actor who looks better than him. It is no surprise that he has already started appearing in leading fashion magazines even without flaunting any of his Bollywood connections.

Make no mistake, a lot of senior actors and veteran journalists in Bollywood know him and have interacted with him too.

Jaan made news again last year when he was selected to model for the leading fashion magazine Vogue (UK edition). They splashed a picture of him in ‘Retro Fashion’ on its inside pages and there was no mention of Aamir Khan. His mother proudly posted the picture on her twitter account. Jaan really looks like he will grow up to be a handsome Bollywood hero. I am embedding the tweet with the picture that his mother Jessica uploaded. I can’t help but wonder if Jaan can act too.

The picture created quite a sensation even though the media was largely unaware of the alleged Aamir Khan connection of Jaan.

Below are some more tweets of Jessica where she has captured Jaan in different moods. I wish Jaan all the best in life and hope someday he will consider joining Bollywood since his mother is so passionate about Bollywood.

Interestingly Jessica’s tweet below was meant for Jiah Khan and her mother Rabiya.

This post is a little sensitive so I have taken all the precautions. I have never worked harder to toe the line in any of my previous posts. So, I am making a few things clear here.

1. Even though I have a lot of exclusive information I have not shared them in this post. I have only shared whatever is already there in the public domain. By ‘public domain’ I mean that the matter has already been published in newspapers, magazines, websites and social networking sites. So, I have not published anything on this blog that is not available to anybody else in the world with an internet connection. Some of the published articles have been hyper-linked where they are relevant.

2. I am not endorsing the veracity of the articles that have been published on the subject. I don’t take responsibility of the articles that have been published before. Like any layman, I have read those articles and I have been influenced enough to write this blog. There is nothing in this blog which is my own, not even the deductions and conclusions. The only thing that I have done is that I have researched on the subject because it seemed interesting to me. Like me, countless number of people have done it before.

3. Nothing that is mentioned here is pending in a court of law and none of the content here has been barred by a court of law from publication. There has been no public or private notice from any of the parties concerned on this subject. The denials from the concerned parties have also been mentioned along with the media reports.

4. Some earlier photographs of Jaan have been published on reputed newspapers and magazines without permission. I have taken care to not use any of those photographs. I have used only those photographs that have been uploaded by his own family on the internet. None of those photos have been made ‘private’ even though there were options to do it. The photos can be seen and downloaded by anybody even if you are not following Jessica Hines on Twitter. On the blog, the photos are in the same space where it has been uploaded (the internet). So, the laws of privacy have not been broken here. One of the pictures tweeted above was published in a reputed international magazine and have been circulated widely across public platforms.

5. A lot of care has been taken to ensure that depictions in the article are in a positive light even though this is a simple blog and not a media platform floated to earn revenues. Only people who already know about the blog, read it. Please remember that I am a simple lay person writing about something that has already been written about extensively for the last nine years. Most importantly, I am not breaking any law here.

Well….don’t know whether its true or not that Amir Khan had a relationship with Jessica Hines and had a son named Jaan but got doubts about it as Jaan resembles Amir but could be a coincidence and a false story completely!